


Springs Eternal

by tjs_whatnot



Category: Dawson's Creek
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 11:30:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17042915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjs_whatnot/pseuds/tjs_whatnot
Summary: Pacey Witter is a breast-man, no one knows that more than his wife.





	Springs Eternal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sandyk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandyk/gifts).



Pacey Witter was a breast-man. No one knew that better then his wife, Joey Potter-Witter. She'd known it since their first summer together. Alone on the "True Love" they would lie in their hammock and she would read to him while he rested his head on that place where her heartbeat could reverberate in his ears. His fingers would graze along the place where her swimsuit would cover the barest pieces of her. She pretended not to notice, but as he got more courageous, her body began to respond in noticeable ways. 

Later, when they began making love, she adored the dedication and attention that he paid to her breasts. Loved the way his mouth took her nipples hungrily; how he wetted them so that they were sensitive to ever breath he took. He told her he loved all of her equally, but that he thought her breasts in particular were his gift for being a good person, his reward for living his life right and giving her all that she wanted and needed. She thought the same way.

She liked all his bits equally as well, but for her, she thought that spot on his forehead, where her lips fit so naturally, where her chin rested so perfectly between his eyebrows, where she could feel his worry lines melt when she rested her lips upon them was hers and hers alone. Her prize for finally seeing the mind hidden inside in all its brilliance.

There were a few times when her stomach took over the devotion reserved for her breasts. When her belly was stretched with their daughters, and he would rest his head there, talking, telling stories and occasionally, when he thought Joey was asleep, singing to it. 

Joey wondered how he would do sharing her breasts with first Lillian and then Lindley; but Pacey was a very good father and learned to share, knowing their hunger was temporary while his was a life-long need. It always amazed Joey to just how good a father Pacey was. It was like he was made to be a father of girls. Daddy's girls, both of them.

She often laughed at the life she'd found herself having. She had become one of those people she disdained as a teenager while living in Capeside and working at the Icehouse. Those people who summered at the Cape, who came every season with their perfect children, their perfect spouses and lived in their perfect houses while they forgot about the city grind. 

During the year, they lived in New York City where she worked as an editor at Random House while Pacey worked for any restaurant who could afford his renowned skills as a Chef. From Memorial Day until Labor Day, the season for Cape Cod, Pacey opened the restaurant in Capeside and when the girls started school Joey would come up the minute school was out. At first, they had stayed at the Potter B & B, helping out, but after a few years, Pacey had surprised her by finally buying a replacement for "True Love." He named her "Springs Eternal" and it put the "True Love" to shame; big enough for them all to live comfortably for three months at a time.

She knew she was lucky, blessed really. She saw it in the relationships around her and how the people in them struggled to stay relevant in each other's lives. Saw how love waned and how interests differed and split. She'd seen it with friends from work and read it in the tabloids each time her childhood friend Dawson Leery had another relationship fail once the movie he and his co-star/girlfriend wrapped. They even laughed about it these days.

Meanwhile, Pacey surprised and challenged her almost everyday. He took up jogging to keep her company around Central Park, he dragged her to jazz and calypso clubs for openings to new hot spots he'd heard about. They debated politics and private vs. public education. And at night, Joey and Pacey curled up in their bed, Pacey's head resting on Joey's chest where her heart echoed in his ear and she read to him, and their daughters who cuddled against them until they fell asleep and Pacey carried them to bed.

Joey watched the women at the gym obsess at staying in shape to remain as young and as shapely as they had been in their youth. She wasn't immune to that, of course she wasn't. She knew there were stretch marks that were never going away and she knew that her breasts, her husband's reward, weren't as pert as they once were, the nipples spread out due to breast-feeding. But he never said anything. In fact, as time went on, the exultation and adoration to her much-used breasts became even more devout. 

So, of course it was Pacey who first noticed the lump. 

He held her hand at the doctor's office and she wasn't sure if it was to comfort her or himself. When she got out of surgery, he tried to hide the fact that he had been crying, and when he saw her misshapen and deformed breast, he tried to hide his revulsion. They both tried.

After three months of chemotherapy, the scars were the least of their worries. Joey wondered if she'd ever even have the strength to love him the way that he deserved. She knew that Pacey would kill himself trying to be everything for everyone, to make it up to his daughters when she was too weak to take them to school and dance, drama and karate. He was there for all meals and for bathes and dishes and bedtime stories. 

And she had no more reward for him.

Pacey did what he always did in this situations, be became Super-Pacey. Joey, likewise, resorted to past behavior and shut down. She became uncommunicative and defensive. Nobody could say or do anything right and she spent a lot of time alone or at the office. She also spent a lot of time either filled with anger, fear or pity about what was happening to her and guilt and self-hatred for the way she was treating everyone that mattered to her.

That next May, they had one of their biggest fights. She had two more sessions of chemo and Pacey was contemplating whether he should postpone going to Capeside to open the restaurant. She said he was being ridiculous and he said she was trying to get rid of him. By the end of the fight, Pacey had agreed to go, but said his worst fear is that she wouldn't be there when school let out. Joey worried about the same thing. The easy thing would be to hole up in their Eastside apartment all summer and wallow. As the time got closer though, and she watched her beautiful girls practically bouncing with excitement about their summer adventures, she knew, if for no other reason she would go.

Driving up I-95 in the pouring rain with the girls sleeping in the back seat, Joey was as nervous as she had been that one summer afternoon when she had come to Pacey and changed her whole life for the first time.

Getting out of the car, hugging her raincoat to her and seeing Pacey on the dock tending to the boat brought the sense of deja-vu back in a flash that stopped her heart for a moment. When he turned and looked at her, she was right back there.

He watched her walk down the dock and he wiped the rain out of his eyes, as if he didn't believe what he was seeing.

"You came," he said when she was close enough.

"Of course."

"Where are the girls?"

"I dropped them off at Uncle Jack and Doug's. They were dying to see Amy again."

"I bet. How have you been?" Pacey asked.

She took off her hood so she could hear him better. "I'm fine."

"You look good."

She smiled through the pain. They were acting like strangers. She had to stop this or they would have the worst summer of their lives.

"Pace...?"

He came closer, waited. "Yeah?"

"I just...just want to say...I missed you."

"I missed you--"

"And I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" he asked. "For what?"

"For what? For everything. For pushing away from you, taking it out on you. It wasn't right."

"Sweetheart--" he began.

"No, let me get this out. Okay?"

He nodded, coming even closer.

"You've just been so great through this, so strong and so supportive."

He reached for her hand. It was shivering. "It's my job."

She smiled. "Then I should be fired."

"Joe, what are you talking about? You're not making any sense. You've been through a rough year. We all have. But it's over, the tumor is gone, the chemo is over. You're going to be fine."

She leaned against his chest, suddenly exhausted. "I'm broken."

"Broken?" he asked, leaning back and cupping her chin with his finger, forcing her to look at him. "Is that what this is about? About that?"

Her shirt was plastered to her, making the size differences in her breasts even more noticeable. She suddenly felt there was a stoplight on her and her deformity. She turned around.

"Of course it's about that. What did you used to call them? Your reward?"

He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, resting his hands on her shoulder and hip. She tilted her head and he leaned his head to rest on her shoulder. "You are my reward. All of you, inside and out. You really think I'm going to feel short changed? You really think that that little piece of skin," he grazed her scar, and although that was immune to his touch, the skin around it was not and responded by shivering against him. "Is all the reward I get? I mean, I've been really good. I want all of you."

She smiled and snaked her hand up to his neck. "I'm your prize?"

"All of you."

"And you don't feel you need a refund?"

He spun her around, took her face in his hands and said, "You can not be serious? Please tell me you're joking."

She answered with a kiss. And then another. And another. He lifted her up, she wrapped her legs around his torso as he walked them to the boat. 

"Permission to come aboard."

He laughed. 

"I love you Pacey Witter."

"I love you too Joey Potter-Witter."

She rested her chin in that place where his nose met his eyebrows and kissed his forehead. She opened her eyes again and looked at him and smiled one of her crooked smiles. "Is your hairline receding?"

He snarled and threw her over his shoulder. "You want a refund?"


End file.
